Was just walking back from the school listening to this great Sino-Grime mix. It’s the first thing that’s made me want to soundtrack the world with headphones for ages, as extra stimulus hasn’t felt like it would be a pleasure. Kind of sad that it takes a mix this old to do that, and it kind of makes me think that it shows that it isn’t just me being too out-of-touch/jaded/raw and otherwise engaged, because I just feel such purity in this form. Sino-Grime too. What kind of a dumb idea is that? Why should that work? Anyway I was telling Syd about the Weather Lady the other day and how she always comments on the climactic conditions to bemused passing strangers and as I’m rolling along in a kind of martial rush to the stiff-but-loose funk machismo of the mix I spot her on the other side of the road. ‘Nice weather, isn’t it?’ I see her mouth saying.
The other day on Gwydir Street I saw a well-turned-out-but-not-obviously-posh old lady outside her tidy-but-not-done-up house smoking a roll-up at about AM. She was definitely in her 70s, possibly 80s. I know it shouldn’t, but the sight of old ladies smoking always gives me such cheer. It’s like ‘Go on Love, have a fucking fag. Fuck ’em all. Fuck ’em!’ Other things that have struck me as ever so mildly incongruous or amusing in a very faint way:

A driving instructor stalling at a junction.
A man sprinting at full pelt out of the jobcentre and into a waiting transit van that was literally pulling away.
Four Asian men getting fishing rods and other angling equipment from the back of a car.
A pumpkinhead caught on the weir in early November.

It strikes me that if the British ever revolted, it could well be at Christmas, or nearabouts. I was walking past John Lewis yesterday and looking at the horrifying, gaping abyss of naffness that the displays represented and it all felt like the most monstrously obvious insult to the soul. I think this means that I am a sort of cross between Scrooge and Brian Sewell. I say Brian Sewell because Sas has just accused me on Facebook of having the writing style of Brian Sewell

So, funnily enough, whenever I drink mint tea and go to bed early I get all these crazy vivid dreams, almost like my brain chemistry is suddenly like Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. This morning I woke with a start because seconds before I’d been in a scenario where I was in a massive all-male queue outside a Little Chef-type place where for some reason everybody was keen to buy tickets in advance for some sort of Christmas celebratory eventl or something. People seemed to want to get these tickets early in order to avoid a queue on the day, but, as I say, this was a very large queue. There was also a cashpoint next to a toilet near the doors, and you could feel people bristling with unspoken awkwardness about which queue they belonged in. At one point a man roughly in his late 50s with an unmistakably simple-minded expression appeared at the doorway of the restaurant and tried to clear up some of the confusion, but for the most part his efforts were met with silent resentment or a series of gruff sounds and quick, uncommunicative gestures. This caused the slightly self-satisfied smile at his own perceived usefulness to fade into one of faint dismay by degrees. As I neared the head of the line I turned round to gauge my relative progress, and as I turned back a pudgy blond teenage boy in front of me pushed me hard on the chest with both hands. Shocked, I began to remonstrate with him but then immediately became aware that someone was also crowding into me from behind. Indeed, they were rubbing up against me at the same time the crowd had become agitated and I was being jostled from several directions at once. Then I realized I was wearing loose, lightweight shorts, and then apprehended with horror that the tall man with the very thick lensed glasses that looked like a bloke I saw on a train about six months ago had invaded my personal space to the ludicrous point of placing his hand on my scrotum. At this, the very apex of my fight-or-flight adrenaline surge, I woke up.

This CD makes me think of sheds for some reason. Tool-boxes rather than Roland Grooveboxes. Rusting scythes, the smell of WD-40, those little scraper things that you use to de-ice windscreens in winter. (Computer) Music for Shepherds.

Words are shifted around to make new sentences, new meanings; a Rubic Cube of words. Sometimes it’s something that’s a little bit like poetry, but not quite – synonymic and phonetic shifts – almost puns – other/times it’s like he’s talking to himself, chatting to dead air, open-mic over Rustic Crunk, joshing imaginary friends, drinking, playfully critiquing himself or getting annoyed by something that might (or might not) have happened earlier that day; it’s like a series of entries in a diary – blogsplatter n scribbled memos-to-self – sometimes talk-songs, sometimes soulful n semi-funky: observations, moans, pronouncements… all accompanied by an array of ratcheting samples and clicky-hissy percussives, a bass-gtr or back-parlour Electro.

(Some of the songs are instrumentals.)

“A male entity announces his name,” says an anonymous snippet of voice plucked from the air. I love things that arrive devoid of context; that force you to guess, to make up a story.

Sometimes he’s tongue-in-cheek; sometimes tongue n groove.

Later, on another song, a weary, downpitched voice says, “No, I really do feel awful” and makes me think of a half-dead cartoon horse. A plodding drum-beat and forlorn-sounding series of bass-strums trudge their way across a seemingly-endless field of mud – a Flanders of the Soul – singing: “I feel so depressed / when I get dressed”. I’m feelin’ it, mate; I’m really feelin’ it.

UmMusic wears its drum-machine on its sleeve for everyone to see.

On “Too Old For Sports” he comes on like a Beck of the Flatlands, a dissolute songwriter exiled out in the reeds and bullrushes w/ a sleeping-bag and his 4-track: “EQ my soul (my piss-up)…I’m on a hidin’ to nuthin’…” / “Scaring myself with the power of a biro…” / etc.

Elsewhere, he’s like a one-man boombox version of The Residents (“Curse The Calm before The Storm”)…fractured riddims n half-melodies rubbin’ themselves against a chair-leg like a randy flea-bitten Spaniel: “I’m gonna drink a lot of Guinness / and get real fat / I’m gonna get no pussy / and stink of cat / And not give a fuck / About this and that…”

Occasionally, he lists his gear or explains how he’s mixing/tweaking the music; I loove it when Process reveals itself and, instead of demystifying the act of creation – the glamour of sound-art – it folds back in on itself adding another layer of complexity. Revelatory auto-critique as a backing vocalist, yeah!

“You make sweet milk with your guitar / it’s the way you are / a black-hole star.”

I think this is 5 years old, so I’m kinda ashamed Pete only came on my radar recently. On the sleeve-notes it says: THERE IS AH WHOLEHEAP AH TALENT IN THE GHETTO THAT IS GOING UNOTICED BY THE MAINSTREAM. DON’T GIVE UP I BREDRENS AND SISTRENS, THE STONE THAT THE BUILDER REFUSED SHALL BE THE HEAD CORNERSTONE.